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The upside of MLB Advanced Media’s relationship with online ticket reseller StubHub is a large check it receives each year. StubHub sends more than half of the fees and commissions it collects on its baseball sales back to MLBAM, which then kicks some back to the teams.
The downside is that the partnership has changed the ticket market in ways that most teams are only beginning to understand, and that some fear could compromise their business at its foundation if they don’t make changes soon. Increasingly, buyers are bypassing the teams and heading directly to StubHub. Some teams say the wide selection of good seats to all games has cost them season-ticket holders.

In his biggest management moves since taking over as chairman of NBC Sports, Mark Lazarus has named longtime Comcast executive Jon Litner group president overseeing several businesses and decided to move most of NBC Sports’ operations to Connecticut.

The NBA has lost about 400 jobs as part of the collateral damage inflicted on the league and its teams during the four-month-old lockout.
The job losses are estimated to number roughly 200 at the NBA’s headquarters and its international offices and about 200 across its 30 teams since last season and over the course of the lockout, said a source familiar with the league’s business dealings.

Three years ago, ESPN agreed to pay the Southeastern Conference what was thought to be a premium rights fee, in part, to prevent the league from starting its own network.
Now, with the conference adding new schools, the concept of a conference channel is back on the table. Several industry sources say the SEC and ESPN are expected to explore such a channel over the next year or two as they modify their media rights deal to account for the addition of Texas A&M and, potentially, Missouri.

AT&T, the NCAA’s longest-standing partner, has extended its corporate champion sponsorship.
The three-year agreement keeps AT&T on board as the NCAA’s official wireless service provider and a heavily integrated sponsor of CBS’s basketball broadcasts, including “At the Half.”